Salem-Keizer/David Green
The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes believe they are no longer an affiliated team. They’re pretty sure. They are now unaffiliated, right?
After all major league clubs extended their offers to the operations that will make up their player-development system, a Giants feeder program since 1997 has been left without a rose. And yet, as the front office of the Volcanoes looks around and sees happy new and old partnerships between major and minor league clubs, no one has actually told them their fate.
The Giants Twitter account sent the message at 11:02 a.m. Wednesday announcing the teams they were inviting for 2021, the first season after the old Pro Baseball Agreement expired. From the Northwest League, which will go from short season to High-A under the new layout, the Eugene Emeralds and their newer, state-of-the-art stadium were the pick.
Salem-Keizer, which has been an Orange and Black affiliate since its inception, saw the tweet and various other announcements or reports from around baseball. The jilting does not come as a shock — that came way back in November 2019, when the original list of teams expected to get the ax leaked. The jilting comes as insulting because of the lack of communication leading up to this moment.
“To not even receive a phone call or a text message or anything like that saying, ‘Hey, we’re going in a different direction’ or something like that — it’s hard to put into words. I can’t say that there haven’t been tears shed,” Salem-Keizer CEO Mickey Walker said over the phone Wednesday. “It’s really heartbreaking.”
The Giants did not respond to a request for comment. The Volcanoes are not alone, teams such as the Tri-City ValleyCats and Clinton LumberKings signaling they found out either by media reports or their former parent club’s official announcement. Forty-three teams were left out of affiliated ball.
Sept. 5, 2019, will go down as the final game of the Volcanoes-Giants partnership that had featured stops for players from Joe Nathan to Tim Lincecum to Buster Posey to Pablo Sandoval. Jerry Walker, Mickey’s father, had brought the team from Bellingham, Wash., to Salem-Keizer in ’97 because the towns of Salem and Keizer would work with the Walker family on a stadium deal that Bellingham would not; MLB had told the Bellingham Mariners upgrades were needed to the facilities or else it would lose its affiliation.
A few decades later, the Giants had not provided the same threat but did ask Salem-Keizer for improvements after the 2019 season. Things like a new batters eye, redoing a part of the infield because there was a lip, pressure-washing gum off the dugouts — “pretty minimal things overall,” Mickey Walker said. The touch-ups were done, all after recently adding a 5,000 square-foot hitting facility that, during the pandemic, was made climate-controlled.
“I’d say it was for nothing, but it’s not because we’re still going to be playing ball,” said Walker, who said Volcanoes baseball has essentially been his life. “I guess the Giants won’t be able to see what we’ve done.”
While Wednesday brought long-awaited finality to the overhauling-MiLB process, there are still so many questions from Salem-Keizer. Major League Baseball vowed that it would support baseball in the communities that its realignment was hurting, with various off-shoot leagues sprouting up. With eight teams in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Colorado, the independent Pioneer League will be “partnered” with MLB, if not affiliated. The Appalachian League will relaunch as a summer college wood-bat league. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New Jersey, clubs left without affiliation will form an “MLB Draft League” comprised of prospects eligible to be drafted.
What awaits the Volcanoes? Walker doesn’t know, but he’s listening.
“If it’s something that works for us, we’ll probably end up going that path,” said Walker, whose Volcanoes are in an especially tough spot, literally, because most Northwest League team are affiliated — they have few unaffiliated options options to play. “But if it’s something that doesn’t work for us, we’re still going to figure out a way to play baseball here, whether it’s independent league or something of that nature.
“We’re going to be playing high-level baseball here no matter what next year, and we’re dedicated to that because this community deserves it.”
The Giants will be playing about 70 miles south. The Emeralds come with a strong reputation, having won the Baseball America award for top short-season affiliate in 2020 because of their community work, including organizing blood drives and mask making/distributing. But they also come with a ballpark that was built in 2010.
“They have a beautiful stadium there, and I don’t think there’s any denying that,” Walker said of PK Park, a $19.2 million facility that is also home to the Oregon Ducks. “They have the best money can buy.”
Walker can understand the decision, if not the communication process. He said he’s not angry with the Giants, but being shut out for so long has “really been the toughest thing to swallow.”
What’s next is asking Major League Baseball for Plan B. They don’t know what it consists of, but the league has promised all the lost cities would be taken care of.
What’s next is a lot of discussions about their options. There is a lot of anger and frustration around Minor League Baseball, and in one instance, the Staten Island Yankees shut down operations and sued the New York Yankees and MLB “to hold those entities accountable for false promises” that they would always be a farm team.
Walker did not want to respond directly when asked if Salem-Keizer had entertained any similar plans but said, “There’s absolutely no option that is off the table.”
